by Jamie Hawke
Gertrude was the first to enter the ring, but immediately her feet sank into the stone. The two men rushed forward to pull her free, and now all three of them were sinking fast. I held my hands out to keep the rest back, not sure what to do.
“It’s a curse!” Ebrill shouted, hands thrust out and glowing green as she apparently tried to counter it. “My power’s not enough.”
“They knew this would be our only move,”
“We did,” a voice said from behind, and we spun to see Fatiha standing there. Not the Fatiha from my time, but one with tendrils of shadow magic streaming from her like a long dress as she floated above her army. It was the same woman, but somehow way more powerful. “None of you will ever leave this spot.”
A mage at her side thrust out his staff and rings of red rose from the ground, hitting the two men and Gertrude. All three were consumed by the rocky ground, becoming one with it, merging until they were gone and in their place the rocks jutted out, sharp.
I shouted, enraged and confused. Gertrude was supposed to live, to be there when I showed up at the house. She was supposed to help me figure out how to use the Liahona, to save everyone.
Now she was gone and it was up to me.
“If I can just…” Ebrill charged forward, pushing against an invisible force, hands stopping the curse from taking her, and from letting the ground absorb us as it had the others. As it had my aunt.
“Maybe I can help,” I said and accessed my transmutation power, attempting to transform the curse, to use it to our advantage. Indeed, it transformed, but even as it did I realized the irony in the situation. Instead of killing us, the curse was transforming us. Or rather, them. I pulled out the Liahona, gusts of wind and debris flowing around me as the curse hit the others. Ebrill was still pushing forward but her fingers were growing claws, and horns emerged from her head.
A thought made my gut clench—I was the one who turned them into this!
But we were through, charging past the now-visible rings carved into the stone. We had made it past their barrier and overcome the mage’s spell—at the cost that those remaining looked like demons with their horns and tails, and skin in purple and blue. One piece of the puzzle didn’t make sense, though, or didn’t until I heard the words Fatiha spoke next.
“You can’t keep my magic from working,” Fatiha shouted after me. “My magic is strong, and with the last of it my curse will see them changed to stone. Wait and see!”
How little did she know, while I was well aware of what would happen next. They would be stone, all right, until I managed to wake them far in the future. Even then, they would be stone each day, only flesh at night.
It was the price they paid to get me here, so I made the most of it.
“I’ll find you,” I shouted to Ebrill. To all of them, really. “Trust me. I’ll find you and wake you.”
The last of them turned back on the enemy, now in full gargoyle mode as they fought to keep me safe. Like the eye of a storm, the winds and debris continued to blow all around me, pushing even Fatiha and her army back. They dared not enter the nearby area, now that they had seen what happened to my team. Or was it something else? I took a step forward, moving for the center of what appeared to be a room carved out of stone with openings on one side and water visible far below.
Only, it wasn’t so far below, I realized. It had been but was now rising fast.
Waves crashed up against the side of the mountain and sent water spraying past the caves and the openings. Some of it flowed in, so that my knees were wet as I knelt and began to chant. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, as I touched upon my transfiguration power and let it flow. It felt like I was speaking in tongues as the words emerged and created a spell of their own accord.
In a flash, the water rose around me, the land folding, spinning, and expanding, and then a burst of magic shot out from the Liahona. A doorway opened and it all froze. Light hovered in the air and the water stopped mid-flow. Only I was moving. A glance around showed that the ladies, poised in their defensive positions and ready for anything, had completed their transformation to stone.
If not for my knowledge from my timeline where I had first met Ebrill and Kordelia in the exact poses I saw them in at that moment, this would have been even more shocking.
It wasn’t only me moving, I realized. Somehow, Fatiha was pushing forward, moving through the magic of the curse. She was growing in form but in a way that made her seem like shadows and blurred light. My first instinct was to attempt stuns and other spells, but nothing worked. They all fizzled away as soon as the spells hit the magical wind. I tried using my transmutation magic as I had before, but all it did was vibrate through me in a way that let me know what sort of power I was dealing with here.
She was strong, and I was fucked.
Unless… My eyes went to the Liahona in my hands. It was opening this portal, supposedly doing something that would cause the magic of the world to change. If I could redirect some of its power at her, maybe… As I thought it, with my transmutation well already open for access, a blue beam shot out at Fatiha.
Her eyes went wide. The light and shadows faded, flowing through the light and back at me and into the Liahona, until she collapsed just outside the circle of my stone friends.
“No…” she muttered, and then slouched in defeat.
My power told me one thing about her at that moment—she was no longer a threat. I had stolen her magic, and now it was time for me to finish the mission. I went for the doorway that shone like an opening of light, floating there and calling me to it.
As I paused in front of it, the waves crashed again and this time rose, flowing all around me and the portal, surrounding us and carrying Fatiha and the others away. My magic told me that there had been a major shift. I closed my eyes to reach out and feel my surroundings. It was true—the armies of darkness were gone, mostly defeated. Others pulled back and retreated into the shadows and underground even as waves rode over the land, submerging much of it in magical water.
Avalon was no more, although it didn’t seem to have ceased to exist. It was simply not there anymore, not where it had been. It was as if the water had taken all of Avalon to another place. Maybe that would make sense to me in time, but for now, I only knew that I needed to keep my end of the promise.
I clutched the Liahona to my chest with both hands and stepped into the portal.
92
“It’s not a vault,” I said, waking to find the shisa eyeing me, Ebrill and Steph both standing over me. “It opens the way to Avalon. A magical land, where—”
“Where Rianne will be waiting,” Ebrill said, eyes flooding with excitement as memories hit her.
“You remember?” I asked.
She nodded. “The rest of us… couldn’t make it back. When Avalon vanished, only she stayed.”
“And the attack here?” I asked, realizing that all was quiet. “What happened?”
“On pause,” Steph said. “Although it might be the calm before the storm.”
“Is that… it?” Ebrill stepped toward me, hand out, eyes on the Liahona.
“It is.” First, I connected with the building and moved our protective layer aside to get a good view around. No attacks came. In fact, it was a peaceful night. The moon shone large above and the twinkling lights of a business not far off reminded me that some people were simply going about their lives while mine had been completely thrown on its head.
I took a step toward the statue of Kordelia, memories flashing of the real her, and how odd it had been that I hadn’t known her at all when I went to sleep. So much had changed, while here it seemed that barely any time had passed. With a glance back at them, I held up the Liahona. “We’re ready?”
Ebrill nodded, then Steph. The shisa nudged my leg, reminding me that it was there. I scratched it behind the ears, impressed with how soft its fur was, then pulled up my screen. In part it was to get this going, and also to move my focus away from how creepily large the shisa’s red e
yes were. My screen had the option to wake Kordelia, so I selected it.
Blue light glowed from the ball in my hands, then from her as the stone started to crack. Ebrill moved up next to me, hand on my shoulder, and the power flared. In an instant, Kordelia was free! She rose from the stone, roared as she stretched, and then turned to me, the blue light fading from her as she became a normal gargoyle.
Her eyes met mine, and she considered me. “Seems you were destined for greatness after all. What is this place?”
“The future,” I replied. “And… in a sense, Gertrude’s house. My aunt… I thought.” Turning to Ebrill, I added, “But—”
“She died,” Ebrill replied with a nod. “And yet, she was here…”
“My guess,” Steph chimed in, earning her a confused look from Kordelia, “is that although she died in our timeline, it didn’t affect the actual past where she once lived. Our timeline isn’t affected by going back in time, in a strange way.”
“So… not following the Back to the Future-style travel at all,” I said. Now both Kordelia and Ebrill were looking at us like we were nuts. I shrugged, realizing there was no way we could explain all of that to them at the moment. “Point is, Gertrude was still alive in my time, until recently. I don’t understand how that’s possible if she died in my past.”
“And you thought she was your aunt?” Kordelia asked.
I nodded.
“Too bad. She was always known to be good in the sack.”
Ebrill hit her playfully. “Don’t tell him stuff like that about his aunt.”
“If she even was his real aunt. We all knew she had no sister, and… judging by this time period, wasn’t from here.”
As far as I could guess at it all, she was right. Gertrude had managed to escape the curse and set out to find the others. Maybe her memory wasn’t all there either. Maybe it came back in bits and pieces as she found them. She hadn’t been my real aunt at all, but found a way to insert herself into my mother’s life—the estranged, well-off sister—after discovering a young boy was born with a magical connection that had the potential to turn this magical war around.
Or had she seen me in the past and been waiting all this time to find me when I was born, and then put the pieces in place to get us here? It was all a bit much to process, but I felt the puzzle coming together as though my transmutation magic formed the bonds, drawing lines and giving it light.
Kordelia turned to Ebrill and then Steph with a look of confusion. “I know one of you, and recognize this man.” She glared at Steph, then demanded of Ebrill, “Who is this, and where are the others?”
“Others…” I repeated the word, not as a question. It hit me that the others had indeed turned to stone as the spell finished and I was taken out of the heart of the mountain, transported back to this spot. “You think we can find them?”
Her glance my way was even more confused.
“We don’t know,” Ebrill admitted, turning back to me, then Steph. “Did you hear anything while under their influence?”
“Bits of my time under the curse are still with me,” Steph said. “But that side… no, they didn’t have the answers. If anyone, that’ll be—”
“Gertrude,” I interjected.
“I still don’t understand it,” Kordelia admitted.
Realizing that there was no getting around at least attempting an explanation, I traced a line in the air, using my transmutation power to make an actual line of blue light appear. “Imagine it like this. Even with going back in time, we only affect our time going forward. Never truly the past. But that doesn’t explain why I was able to fight, why I was able to take the Liahona.”
“Unless that’s how it always was.” Ebrill looked about as confused as I felt.
“Or she didn’t actually die back then,” Steph offered. “In either timeline, I mean. In that case, you did take the Liahona, and maybe had it in the other timeline, I don’t know. We’re dealing with magic here, so… your movies and the so-called rules of time travel might not make the most sense.”
I frowned. “We saw her, but…”
“Again, magic. Healing. Who knows. It’s possible, though, isn’t it?”
“Actually, we didn’t see her corpse,” Ebrill admitted. “Only her being absorbed by the stone.”
Wiping away my floating timelines, I grunted. Maybe my time explanation wasn’t right, but it was cool.
“What matters is that we know what we have to do,” I pointed out. “We need to get my aunt back.”
“So, she’s not dead?” Kordelia asked.
“We think she is.” I chuckled, realizing how ridiculous this sounded. “But in our timeline, the future where I met you all… she died. However, she left behind some sort of magical version of herself.”
“Perfect. Where?”
“That’s the not-so-perfect part. With… Fatiha.”
“She’s here?” Kordelia snarled, claws bared. “Can someone tell me what exactly is going on? What are we up against?”
I did my best to fill her in on what had happened so far, stressing the point that Steph had been under a curse and hadn’t acted on her own when attacking us, and that Ebrill hadn’t had her memory regarding Fatiha. About how my dreams had taken me back in time, to a world where Avalon had still been part of it, and apparently dark and very different types of people and creatures had roamed the Earth.
“We have the Liahona,” Kordelia said, processing it all. “Why can’t we simply open the way, find Rianne. and restore access to Avalon?”
“Only one person knew how to do that,” Ebrill replied.
“Gertrude.” Kordelia considered this, then nodded. “We have to go after her, then.”
“Exactly. And… how do we get her back?”
“And we don’t know where to find her,” I added.
Steph cleared her throat. “I might have an answer to that. And it… might relate to some of the rest of our problem.”
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“They’ve found the heart. The heart of the mountain, I mean. They haven’t been able to access it, but have certainly tried.”
“Right…You mentioned that the enemy knew of at least five, but didn’t know where. It would make sense that at least one or some remained at the heart of the mountain. Maybe the others were accessed later by some spell Gertrude put together, or maybe some were cast into our world by the initial magic that sent Avalon away. I don’t know.”
She nodded. “And whatever caused them all to become stone also put some sort of protective spell on it all.”
“Whatever caused them…” I shuddered, looking first at Ebrill, then Kordelia. “It was me.”
“What?” Ebrill asked.
“Me. I caused it. Or, rather it was the Liahona and the only way I could keep it safe.”
Ebrill looked at me with confusion that slowly became a look of fascination. Kordelia had a hint of a smile, the type like one has after figuring out the answer to a riddle.
“Shouldn’t you be mad at me?” I asked.
“No,” Kordelia said. “Because it was the only way. If that’s how it happened, Rianne knew it was the way.”
Ebrill nodded. “She put all of this in motion, after all.”
Steph, too, was staring at me in a new light. “Break the spell and get them, or get them and break the spell—I’m not sure which comes first.”
“But breaking the spell might give the enemy access to the heart.” I frowned. “Do we know what that does? What it means?”
“Access to vast stores of magic,” Ebrill replied. “We’ve talked about it.”
“But, like this?”
She nodded.
“If you can make it there and free her, there’s one more for your side.” Steph glanced at Ebrill and then Kordelia, scrunching her nose as if trying to decide whether that was a good thing or not. “The enemy, as I knew them at least… we can access their hideout.”
“If we can access it and find the one behind this,�
� Ebrill’s eyes lit up with excitement, “we get access to Gertrude, and then restore Avalon.”
“And find the others,” Kordelia said. “Find Aerona, for one. She’s powerful, and we could use her on our side.”
“We could use them all on our side.”
Kordelia nodded. “No one’s denying the effectiveness of the rest.”
“We open the door, we find the others?” I asked.
“I’d actually bet that most are in there,” Kordelia replied. “We can speculate all day long, though, and it wouldn’t do any good. Best get on with it and go from there. So, if this girl says she can get us where we need to be, I say we listen.”
“Morning will be here soon, though,” Ebrill countered. “If we’re going to attack, we all need to attack.”
“She’s right,” Steph agreed. “We’ll need everyone to stand a chance.”
“It’s agreed, then.” I was actually relieved to not have to go on the offensive until the next night. “But… why aren’t they attacking right now?”
“I’m not complaining,” Steph said with a chuckle. “I’m famished.”
“Actually, I could eat,” I admitted, and had to take a wicked piss. After, I connected with the shisa, sending a request that the guardian keep watch on the house. The rest of us cautiously made our way to the kitchen. I paused from time to time to sense whether there was an attack or any of the enemy nearby, but we seemed to be clear.
Soon we’d each had chances to use the bathroom and our bellies weren’t empty. Ebrill looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Is it possible…?”
“What?”
“I’m just thinking out loud here. Maybe something to do with your last dream, or travel, caused them to pull back from the attack?”
“Like my helping back then caused their power to diminish now, too?” I licked some truffle mustard from my lower lip, still relishing the taste of the turkey sandwich I’d made for myself.
“It’s… maybe possible,” Steph said, but held her hand up and made a line of fire appear from her palm, tracing it around her fingers. “Although, it doesn’t seem to have affected me.”
